Mobilog

Tuesday, July 1, 2003

Is the "Wi-Fi" wireless internet boom about to turn into a bust?
6:26:17 PM

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Global Partnership Puts RealNetworks's Media Player on Vodafone Handsets. RealNetworks plans to announce a partnership with Vodafone that would place Real Media Player in cellphone handsets using the Vodafone service. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology]
6:20:50 PM

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Wireless Internet in Hotels. Marriott International said yesterday that it had completed the installation of wireless high-speed Internet access systems in 400 hotels in the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany. Marriott said the wireless Internet service, commonly known as Wi-Fi, was available in hotel lobbies, meeting rooms and other public spaces. It said it was the largest such deployment in the hotel industry. By Joe Sharkey. [New York Times: Business]
6:20:31 PM

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Hot Spot Bubble to Burst?. Investors and analysts are starting to get cold feet, but wireless ISPs keep on pushing: This article is full of excellent subtlety in balancing the views of the folks with money or advising those with it, and the companies who have banked on building it so the users would come. (It's also a sort of who's who at the end of 802.11 Planet attending companies and people.) Here's one good statistic that's not widely known: Richard Snyder of Concourse Communications, the group that's managing the build-out and operation (but not billing and authentication) of Wi-Fi and cell at Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York/New Jersey airports, and others, said on a panel on airports that I moderated at 802.11 Planet that the "hockey stick" effect is finally kicking in. Snyder noted that over the last year since they unwired Minneapolis/St. Paul's terminals, they saw very steady usage, no real spurts. Following the Centrino announcement, however, April and May each had significant double-digit growth -- over 15 percent last month. I'll be curious to see if providers like Boingo, Wayport, and T-Mobile HotSpot decide to release similar numbers, if they're seeing that sort of usage. If the hockey stick is here, it only requires a few companies to confirm it for the tide to shift from "cold spots" back to "hot hot hot!"... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:19:31 PM

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AirPath's Air Path. AirPath partners with satellite data provider to offer hot spots beyond the central office and cable head end: I missed this story last week, but AirPath, which has turnkey hot spot hardware and billing services, partnered with Mainstream Data, which allows a hot spot operator off the beaten path to pay a reasonable price for a broadband feed. The Mainstream site says they support up to 40 Mbps, but no costs are listed.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:17:50 PM

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Cingular Has an EDGE. Cingular deploys world's first 2.5G EDGE network: TechDirt analyzes EDGE, a successor to GPRS that can offer up to 170 Kbps of raw speed through a software upgrade to cellular systems. EDGE was originally thought of as an also-ran, but the near-term success of GSM's competitor standard CDMA in the form of 1xRTT makes EDGE a better transition. What's great for me, of course, is that I have Cingular service, and have been hoping that they would offer some kind of 2.5G option that was worthwhile and affordable. I currently use GSM (9600 bps) for data calls because the minutes for usage are taken out of my regular pot -- including the thousands of free weekend minutes, which is when I typically use it when traveling. GPRS under Cingular is $8/month plus $30 per Mb after the first megabyte. EDGE could be a compromise: fast enough to allow low enough surcharges to make it a good add-on. But possibly only if they decide to bundle some form of Wi-Fi with it -- Cingular is a holdout in the cell world with no public plans to link any of their billing plans or networks with Wi-Fi.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:08:02 PM

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How to Invest in Wi-Fi. Sensible advice on Wi-Fi investing: This columnist notes that it's hard to get on the Wi-Fi bandwagon because so many companies are still in the private funding phases. However, he notes that in the future a mutual fund or three might arise that would allow investment with greater ease. Of course the flip side is that a massive number of the companies funded today won't be around in two to three years, and Cisco, Intel, 3Com, and others will have purchased them (probably before an IPO in this climate) or crushed them. Ah, innovation!... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:02:44 PM

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Virgin's Train Station Service. Virgin adds in-station access at Manchester, Birmingham train stations: Next, they need to put satellite feeds on the trains -- or 3G cell-to-Wi-Fi bridges.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
5:52:55 PM

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iAnywhere Gives Pylon a Facelift. The Sybase subsidiary unveils updates to its Pylon software, including support for e-mail attachments, and push and alert capabilities. [allNetDevices Wireless News]
5:45:28 PM

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WLAN coming to almost all notebooks, IDC says. Analyst expects almost total wireless integration by 2007, at little if any extra cost. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
5:32:49 PM

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Wireless Handheld World Is a 'Wild West' .... On the Mark: The war for wireless handheld developers is just getting under way. Corporate IT may change the course of the battle to favor one camp or another. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
4:48:08 PM

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